Tonight the creative juices are flowing. Alas, I can't think of a whole lot at the moment. I'm going to attempt a little covert free association (so called because you won't be able to detect when I'm doing it here, unless my slightly schizophrenic break with reality pops up and takes us on a tangent somewhere away from reality or east of Davenport, Iowa, whichever is closer).
(Potential psychotic break is sponsored by Mountain Dew Throwback. MAN this stuff is good!)
Dang. I had hoped that, by now, that bar-looking thing would have appeared on the right hand side of the screen. I love when it first appears, because it always makes me feel like I'm really accomplishing something. It's like an old friend encouraging me to keep going when the going gets tough, or like that gym coach we all had -not the big, fat guy whose armpits seemed sweat soaked even in December, but the average-sized guy who told you that you were going to do it this time.
He was right. The scroll bar is here. It's here! The thing popped up just as I was rounding out the last paragraph, but I couldn't slow down in time to let you know it was here. Not that I have slow reflexes, but I was distracted, momentarily, by what appeared to be a fruit fly hovering way over on the left hand side of the screen. You'll be relieved to know that it was, in fact, not a fruit fly but something in my eyes called a "floater". I can't tell you how many times floaters have led me to react with such precipitous force that holes in walls were created in my attempts to swat the would-be winged invaders of my domain. Anyway, the floater has now floated its way over to the other side of my left eye, so now everything important is clustered together. Spellcheck? Yep. Scroll bar? Got it. Floater? Floater? Now the stupid thing is floating back to the center of the screen, as though my vision were some kind of carpenter's level and the stigma wannabe is the bubble in the middle. Spellcheck isn't going to like this, I'll tell you. Too much interference. It's going to become pretty confusing when I keep asking it to check on the spelling of a weird occular anomaly that closely resembles a reversed ampersand.
I'm back from taking a five minute break from that last paragraph. Sorry. I should have mentioned that I was going to slip out for a moment to get something to drink. I'd have offered you something, but by now I assume you're drinking Mountain Dew Throwback . That stuff is good, you know. In a moment I'm going to wrap this up so I can proofread it. (I sure hope "proofread" is a compound word; spellcheck suddenly doesn't want to work. Note the irony.) In the meantime, I'll let you in on something I only share with my family and closest friends: lately I've been tempted to click on the "tilde" key. That's the one in the upper left hand corner of the keyboard. Mind you, I might not actually be so bold as to hold down the shift key at first. I think that would be rather presumptuous, don't you? What is that odd character that looks like a backward preceeding quote of a quote -the symbol which shares the tilde key? Anyway, the tilde key seems so mysterious -so downright foreign in a men-here-all-have-moustaches-and-all-the-buildings-are-at least-two-hundred-years-old kind of way. I think I want to click it, but I'm concerned that if I do, some foreign embassy will phone me and tell me to cut it out before I accidentally start an international incident or something. For all I know, the thing is benevolent. Maybe it doesn't mind being clicked every now and then. Hey, maybe it's hoping to be clicked. Since I bought this computer some time back, I've hit the "e" key some 9,117 times thus far. (I'm also obsessive-compulsive, but we'll save that that for another subject. Ask me about how I wore out my doorknob sometime.) It could be that the tilde key feels left out. Why not click on it? The worst that could happen is that the embassy will call me, asking me why I'm clicking their icon.
I'm going to do it! I don't mind telling you I feel a little nervous about this, since I've never been in serious trouble before. Here goes:
~
I did it! I've waited a long time to do that! If you'll give me a minute, I want to go look in the mirror to see if I look different, plus I'm so proud right now that I need to wipe my eyes. When I awoke this morning, I never thought I'd have accomplished anything so advanced as a tilde. I mean, it was just last week that I had finally mastered percentage symbol, and let me say right now that taming that little symbol is no mean feat. Now, at 12:04 Eastern time, I've broken new ground. The tilde has been clicked! I'm calling my mom and my brother to share the great news!
But first, I need to take a phone call.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
Hate And Discontent For Fun And Profit
What a wonderful vacation! Not that I could afford to go anywhere this year, unless Mt. Airy counts. Those who have the means go to Europe so they can be "ugly Americans", and the rest of us go to Mt. Airy. "Harold and I just got back from our third trip to Barcelona this year. Did you enjoy the sights and sounds of Floyd's City Barber Shop, Rob?" Sleeping in was nice. I think the neighbor upstairs, who clomped around in his clodhopper boots at 6:30 every morning, did his best to lend a certain ambiance to that time of the year I work hard for. I don't care what anyone else tells you; sleeping with earplugs in makes ears very, very sore.
Because I'm a part time employee, my vacations are unpaid. I'd like to express my gratitude to the Grand Imperial Board of Field Marshall Directors for that decree. God Knows we part timers NEVER work our butts off while the full time folk spend half the day sitting around, complaining about "how bad things are" and taking two cigarette breaks every hour. With no health insurance (ol' Barack is sure to love this), no vacations, and no sick days, we lowly part-timers easily carry forty percent of the total workload -that's two of us out of nine employees, Vern. My favorite thing about returning to work, of course, is being met by Mr. I-Don't-Have-to-Work-Because-I'm-A-Chain-Smoking-Assistant-Manager with "Hey Rob, when you get a chance, could you move the Blue Ridge Mountains an inch to the west?" Seriously, it's grating to be summoned to the front of the building to load two small boxes of tile into Myrtle's awaiting suv by an assistant manager who could easily have done it himself were it not for yet another impending nicotine fit. I thought the "Do As I Say" style of management went out with powdered wigs and harpsichords. How do I succinctly express my joy over being called away from doing my share of work to do his so that he gets half again as much pay per hour as I do, with full benefits, ad adsurdem?
Then there are The Ladies. Every business has to endure The Ladies. They're the ones who hang around in the break room, spooning 367 helpings of sugar into their coffee and giving dirty looks to the lowly hard workers of the company who DARE enter into their ersatz domain; their eyes close into slits so narrow one would imagine them to work best at night looking for the litter box and chasing mice around the office. You work routinely in hundred degree temperatures in the summer and forty degrees (and colder) in the winter; they bask in seventy two degrees of air conditioned paradise in the summer and go home early when their heater stops and the temperatures in their offices plummet to an arctic sixty-seven degrees. The Ladies constantly huddle in the executive breakroom, insulting anyone not in their immediate Circle of Righteousness and shivering at the mere prospect of another traumatic winter afternoon of having to wear a sweater.
Am I whining? Yep. But I'm whining while laughing, which is still legal until Nancy Pelosi makes another appearance with an oversize gavel and rules it otherwise. What I don't like is the intentional lack of respect for the people at the bottom of an organization who do most of the hard work for little pay and no benefits. I'd expect that in a for-profit business, but this is a nonprofit "Christian" organization with the mission of helping those in need. Ironic, no? I think it's that hypocrisy to which I object the most. I'm looking for some other job, but so far there are no takers. Apparently, the unemployment rate in this region is even higher than normal.
I'll chalk that up to "change we can believe in".
Because I'm a part time employee, my vacations are unpaid. I'd like to express my gratitude to the Grand Imperial Board of Field Marshall Directors for that decree. God Knows we part timers NEVER work our butts off while the full time folk spend half the day sitting around, complaining about "how bad things are" and taking two cigarette breaks every hour. With no health insurance (ol' Barack is sure to love this), no vacations, and no sick days, we lowly part-timers easily carry forty percent of the total workload -that's two of us out of nine employees, Vern. My favorite thing about returning to work, of course, is being met by Mr. I-Don't-Have-to-Work-Because-I'm-A-Chain-Smoking-Assistant-Manager with "Hey Rob, when you get a chance, could you move the Blue Ridge Mountains an inch to the west?" Seriously, it's grating to be summoned to the front of the building to load two small boxes of tile into Myrtle's awaiting suv by an assistant manager who could easily have done it himself were it not for yet another impending nicotine fit. I thought the "Do As I Say" style of management went out with powdered wigs and harpsichords. How do I succinctly express my joy over being called away from doing my share of work to do his so that he gets half again as much pay per hour as I do, with full benefits, ad adsurdem?
Then there are The Ladies. Every business has to endure The Ladies. They're the ones who hang around in the break room, spooning 367 helpings of sugar into their coffee and giving dirty looks to the lowly hard workers of the company who DARE enter into their ersatz domain; their eyes close into slits so narrow one would imagine them to work best at night looking for the litter box and chasing mice around the office. You work routinely in hundred degree temperatures in the summer and forty degrees (and colder) in the winter; they bask in seventy two degrees of air conditioned paradise in the summer and go home early when their heater stops and the temperatures in their offices plummet to an arctic sixty-seven degrees. The Ladies constantly huddle in the executive breakroom, insulting anyone not in their immediate Circle of Righteousness and shivering at the mere prospect of another traumatic winter afternoon of having to wear a sweater.
Am I whining? Yep. But I'm whining while laughing, which is still legal until Nancy Pelosi makes another appearance with an oversize gavel and rules it otherwise. What I don't like is the intentional lack of respect for the people at the bottom of an organization who do most of the hard work for little pay and no benefits. I'd expect that in a for-profit business, but this is a nonprofit "Christian" organization with the mission of helping those in need. Ironic, no? I think it's that hypocrisy to which I object the most. I'm looking for some other job, but so far there are no takers. Apparently, the unemployment rate in this region is even higher than normal.
I'll chalk that up to "change we can believe in".
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